LIZ MISÉRABLES
est. 2020
1862
1862- "One of the half dozen greatest novels of the world" is published. When seventeen year-old me decided to take up the task of reading Les Misérables, I did not know what I was getting into. I was unprepared--for the vocabulary, the philosophy, and the history. After reading it consistently for two months, giving up for two years, reading consistently for one week, then coming back two years later, I know for a fact I missed a lot of fairly valuable information.
Have you ever read a paragraph in a book, and thought to yourself, "I know this is profound. I know there are literary devices in here that change how I should be understanding this; I know there are references to specific moments in history that leave me unable to grasp the significance; I know that, by my own volition, I did not pay attention in my most formative classes that, had I quelled my apathy, would have enabled me to be a more educated, thoughtful, and globally-minded person than I am now."
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Well, maybe not verbatim. But a little, at least?
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This website is my best, if quasi-self-indulgent, attempt at grasping every name, place, and deep-cut reference of which Victor Hugo so bravely assumes the average reader is familiar. Liz Misérables is a suspension of my willful ignorance, and a purposeful and meticulous submersion into something much bigger than myself: the balance of law and grace, the (alleged) necessary violence of revolutions, the desperation of starved men, and the grittiness of life that feels a world from our own (here's the kicker--it isn't).
Les Misérables is a book written by one man and about one country. Its essence, however, draws from its applicability to every country and every citizen. Inequity, by nature, trespasses across borders, seeps into government, and encourages prejudice to entrench itself in the lives of the powerful and powerless alike. In my limited experience, the only way to read Les Misérables is to read it as a social commentary, a sappy romance, and an epic that blurs the line between heroism and villainism.
From Les Miśerables, and Hugo himself: "The book which the reader has before him at this moment is, from one end to the other, in its entirety and details ... a progress from evil to good, from injustice to justice, from falsehood to truth, from night to day, from appetite to conscience, from corruption to life; from bestiality to duty, from hell to heaven, from nothingness to God. The starting point: matter, destination: the soul. The hydra at the beginning, the angel at the end."
"Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over, this fact is recognized,--that the human race has been treated harshly, but that it has progressed."
CONTEXT
clues
The French Revolution / The Reign of Terror / The Age of Enlightenment / Art / Timelines
/ France in 1862 / Napoleon / July Revolution / June Rebellion
Get started here.
So long as there shall exist, by virtues of law and custom, decrees of damnation pronounced by society, artificially creating hells amid the civilization of earth...so as the three great problems of the century--the degradation of man through pauperism, the corruption of woman through hunger, the crippling of children through lack of light--are unsolved; so long as social asphyxia is possible in any part of the world....so long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature of Les Misérables cannot fail to be of use.
-Hauteville House, 1862